Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Greek Mythology Of or relating to the underworld.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to the under world.
Wiktionary
- adj. Dwelling within or under the earth.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Pertaining to the earth; earthy.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. dwelling beneath the surface of the earth
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek χθών (khthōn, "ground"). (Wiktionary)
- From Greek khthonios, of the earth, from khthōn, earth; see dhghem- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“[701] The idea that this number was "chthonic" and a monopoly of the Sibylline utterances was started by”
The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus
“The ensuing race to the deadline is a pacy affair that alternates between the hapless Tamara's frequent recourse to her thesaurus S*nday, she reckons, is just the place to scatter words such as "chthonic" and "hermeneutic" and Tait's grim determination to keep her would-be profiler at bay, particularly from her rather murky private life.”
“Can you imagine in the 1930's, the heroic central character fighting evil wizards and chthonic monsters alongside a black man?”
intertribal: hope I don't break my arm falling out of the treehouse
“Ingersoll traces all images of the dragon back to Tiamat, the watery, primordial goddess slain by Marduk in the Enuma Elish, a Babylonian version of the combat myth; as they appear in various myths around the world, dragons are typicallly associated with water, though in different contexts, so that some are rain gods, some are guardians of underground pools, and some are chthonic representatives of the chaotic sea.”
“The point of low fantasy is to watch clean-limbed fighting men from Virginia clash flashing blades against surly yet brawny barbarians from Cimmeria during the last days of Rome on Mars or something, and maybe rescue a half-naked space princess from eldritch evil priests, eldritch chthonic demons, eldritch undead, eldritch pirates, eldritch highwaymen, eldritch encyclopedia salesmen of darkness.”
“The car the Aventador replaces, the Murcielago, set the modern standard for dysfunctional supercar love: ferocious, belt-high, chthonic, a car so pagan you should use a reindeer cape as a car cover.”
“Andre Bauer and why I am a refugee in my own country (NSFW) by chthonic no comments, 3 recommends”
Dems Must Step Up to Majority Governance after the Massachusetts Mess
“The chthonic Dick Whitman still lurks in the shadows, threatening to resurface when others discover the secret box of relics.”
“Down here mired in the clay of mortal flesh, readers are faced with the gunk and dreck of life, invited to notice what is underfoot, to enter and value the chthonic kingdom and taste its indelicacies.”
The Guardian: Mud: Stories of Sex and Love by Michèle Roberts
“Thus, places where nature is dominant are dedicated to chthonic or earthy deities Demeter and Hera, and places where man's intellect and discipline complement and oppose the chthonic forces are dedicated to Apollo.”
The Huffington Post: Alla Kazovsky: "Live-by-Design" Take on Obesity
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chthonic’.
-
Another 250 Spelling Words
Another range of words from the intermediate to the advanced speller's level.
cherimoya, parthenogenesis, sommelier, bupkis, kichel, voulge, indivisibility, retiarius, sewellel, vihuela, ossature, jalfrezi and 238 more...
-
New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 234 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
Starts with a silent letter
...with grateful thanks to telofy (for "cnidarian"), and to the song "Crazy ABC's" by Barenaked Ladies.
cnidarian, mnemonic, chthonic, ptarmigan, psoriasis, psittacine, bdellium, aisle, czar, gnarly, gnat, gnaw and 82 more...
-
FYI
deus ex machina, cantatrice, tartarean, fowl, fodder, bridle, glut, exultation, remuneration, satiation, allotropy, chthonic and 4 more...
-
Four Initial Consonants
Words that begin with a string of four consonants. The letter wye doesn't count, unless it clearly isn't acting as a vowel.
chthonic, nschiego, tschego, schmooze, schmaltz, schnapps, schlocky, schlieric, schlieren, schlump, schmutz, schmuck and 16 more...
-
ancient signs
ouroboros, calypso, la sirene, Medusa, chthonic, aureole, colophon, succubus, peri, homunculus, zephyr, numinous and 56 more...
-
Witchcraft, monsters, and the macabre
lamia, onomancy, divination, hagiolatry, jackalope, lycanthrope, thaumaturge, tzigane, chthonic, thaumaturgic, revenant, soucouyant and 4 more...
-
Actual Words
I checked, because I wasn't sure, but these words were coined and entered into a dictionary before I thought them up.
dishevelment, commoditize, feck, foppery, grimoire, apposite, impassible, reparable, arithmomania, patois, absquatulate, scopperil and 18 more...
-
Words I like
A list contrived for the sole purpose of storing words I like to include in my writing; words that inspire or carry power for me.
contrite, meadow, sward, ossary, calumny, moribund, necropolis, chthonic, murmur, erstwhile, chime, beryl and 63 more...
-
Verba Silvestria
Words of the Woods or Words of the Wilds
sylvestral, sylvester, silvester, silvestrian, sylvestrian, silvatic, sylvatic, silvan, sylvan, silva, sylva, nemorose and 108 more...
-
Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
Words I Know
List of most of the words I've learned
garner, abase, abate, abdicate, abduct, aberration, abet, abhor, abide, abject, abjure, abnegation and 1046 more...
-
-ic ending
Words ending in ic, tic or nic.
clastic, elastic, caustic, spastic, frantic, lactic, moronic, ironic, panic, doric, diplomatic, bureaucratic and 202 more...
-
NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
-
my words
interminable, effete, convocation, philistines, malaise, foibles, deputation, anathematized, morass, stalwart, proselytize, abet and 405 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chthonic.
Louises 'The question of the chthonic spirit has occupied me ever since I began to delve into the world of alchemy’. Jung qoted in The Absence of Mind by Marilynne Robinson 2010. Apr 20, 2013
xvmike "There are traces of the old Christianity at Lakewood Church—or perhaps I should say traces of religion in general—lingering like the echoes of archaic chthonic cults that could still be found in classical Greek mythology and ritual." (Ehrenreich 2009) Apr 19, 2012
nuxiy "The chthonic power - namely, the Earth - lived in her while Heaven lived in man"
- Julius Evola in "The Revolt against the Modern World" Mar 23, 2009
smeggo Pretty underground still, apparently. Oct 11, 2008
dithyramble See also autochthonous, heterochthonous. Aug 8, 2008
yarb It's been ages since I read that splendid novel, must do so again. Jul 24, 2008
sionnach It doesn't seem particularly sensible to apply these readability indices to an individual sentence. Each involves an *average* sentence length, suggesting a lack of validity when the calculation is based on only one sentence. Jul 24, 2008
johnmperry actually brtom your citation doesn't say anything about up.
The second sentence of your quotation contains 70 words, giving it readability index scores of Flesch Reading Ease = 50.4, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 12.0 Jul 24, 2008
brtom I like the way Ralph Ellison in Invislbe Man adapts this word as the name of the building in which the narrator is introduced to The Brotherhood:
We stopped before an expensive-looking building in a strange part of the city. I could see the word Chthonian on the storm awning stretched above the walk as I got out with the others and went swiftly toward a lobby lighted by dim bulbs set behind frosted glass, going past the uniformed doorman with an uncanny sense of familiarity; feeling now, as we entered a sound-proof elevator and shot away at a mile a minute, that I had been through it all before.
Ellison, Invisible Man, 14
Funny how a mythical allusion works the mind, transforming the subsequent details into something altogether new - making an up-to-now hidden world out of details from the ordinary world. The character is being ushered into an "underground" by going up in an elevator. Jan 7, 2007